Is the rage against SJWs a huge Straw-Man argument?

I've been on Youtube a lot recently and the whole place is awash with SJW hatred.In fact, there is so much anti-SJW hatred, that it outnumbers anything actually posted online by SJWs by about ten to one.

On Youtube, you have a wide and diverse range of anti-SJW and anti-feminist opinions, all of which say pretty much exactly the same thing. You get people who call themselves 'classical liberals,' including Dave Ruben and the Skeptic Community, all of which got bored hating on religion and seemed to decide that attacking SJWs was a more marketable past-time now. They like Jordan Peterson too and he is a Christian so work that one out. You also have the alt-rightish commentators and people like (the unpretentiously named) Sargon of Akad who is kind of in-between the two. If you want a video of a crazy student being 'triggered,' it is easier to find than a funny cat video.

I know there are some nutty students on University campuses and on Tumblr. No shit. They are young people on the internet. They also have minority views and have little power. So why the rage against them?

I just think its the tried a trusted political tactic of taking the worst example of a ridiculous thing a political opponent can do and then making it representative of the entire political left. Pick an angry student on a bad day and film them doing something crazy. Then say; "See! This is what 'the left' is like".

Its taken even further too because the 'Cultural Marxist' conspiracy theory seeks to explain how these young and excitable defenders of minority causes are seeking to take over the entire Western World. Jordan Peterson calls it 'Post-Modern Neo-Marxism' and this seems to be the same as 'Cultural Marxism'. I.E. A batshit crazy conspiracy which thinks Marxist theory was a theory of how to control people and that Post-Modernist theory was about control of culture.

Peterson may be an excellent psychologist but he should probably stick to that because he doesn't seem to understand Marxism, Post-Modernism or the word 'Neo'. The idea that a few French intellectuals in the 60s and 70s who represented a (never-dominant) faction within social-science academia could take over the world is ridiculous.

The west has been moving towards more progressive cultural values but a lot of that is due to the decline in Christianity and the more individualistic and atomised way that we live these days. Social diversity is a result of technology, travel and free-market capitalism. It's not because of some French dude in the 60s who nobody has read, nor is it down to a purple-haired 19-year-old who shouts a lot. None of that affects you at all, actually.

Most SJWs see themselves as defending the rights of minority groups, yet the entirety of the political right on Youtube thinks that [i]it [/i]is a besieged minority group which is denied free speech (it isn't, they are allowed to say all kinds of crap on Youtube and some are even NAZIs).

I know Youtube politics is silly but these people do have influence. Some have north of a million subscribers and a lot of people take them seriously. Really though, this shouldn't happen.

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Cierzo · M

Cultural Marxism a crazy conspiracy theory 😂😂.
Good try, but less and less people are affected by words like 'conspiracy' or all the '-ism' the left uses to scare. Sorry.

You sound like a novelist praising his audience hoping they will buy his new book when you defend the SJW generation.

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

@Cierzo [quote]You sound like a novelist praising his audience hoping they will buy his new book when you defend the SJW generation.
[/quote]

Nowhere did I actually praise SJWs at all. 😂 Nor have the people hearting this been SJWs.

I am part of a very different leftist tradition that has different priorities and outlook. But yes, I am also a social progressive and I can spot a straw-man argument. To me it looks like the 'looney-left' tag that the Murdoch press gave socialist Labour Councils in the 1980s. Search hard to find the worst example and then...

I really don't even get how cultural Marxism is supposed to work. How do you get from Foucault and Derrida to the Google HR department and angry teenagers? These things just are not connected and I cannot see the causality.

I did study a bit of postmodernism at University. I found it boring, pretentious and pointless actually. Its a critique against universal truths (such as marxism or liberalism). Its not a plot to take over the world with political correctness.

QuixoticSoul · 41-45, M

@Cierzo [quote]Cultural Marxism a crazy conspiracy theory 😂😂[/quote]Unless we're talking about the Frankfurt School, then basically yes.

SatanBurger · 36-40, F

@Cierzo Cultural Marxism literally started in Nazi Germany to smear the Jewish, so yes it's a conspiracy theory. It was then adopted mostly by far right groups and Nazi's STILL (ironically.)

https://similarworlds.com/8226031-I-Am-Going-to-Say-Something-Controversial/1818096-There-is-no-such-thing-as-cultural-marxism-its-a

[quote]A History of Nazi Germany describes how the Weimar Republic brought about increased freedom of expression (modernism), then described by critics as decadent and irrational. Traditionalist Germans thought that this was causing German culture to decay and that society was heading towards a moral collapse.[7]

The Nazis labelled this modernism as [b]"Cultural Bolshevism"[/b] and, through [b]"Jewish Bolshevism,"[/b] claimed that Jews were primarily behind Communism. In particular, they argued that Jews had orchestrated the Russian Revolution and were the main power behind Bolshevist.[7] This Jewish-led Bolshevist assault was described by Adolf Hitler as a disease that would weaken the Germans and leave them prey to the Jews, with Marxism being perceived as just another part of an "international Jewish conspiracy".[7] An ideological objective was thus the "purification" to eliminate alien influences and protect Germany's culture.[7]

Of course, Nazis also conflated Jews with capitalism. Fascist ideology's complicated relationship with capitalism[8] led to Mussolini mainly attacking a "Finance capitalism"Wikipedia's W.svg — the international nature of banks and the stock exchange — and praising a "Heroic capitalism".

[big]In short: if you don't like it, it's probably the Jews[/big].[/quote]

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism